


Ships that pass

by Sheffield



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-03
Updated: 2012-09-03
Packaged: 2017-11-18 05:58:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/557650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheffield/pseuds/Sheffield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>None</p>
    </blockquote>





	Ships that pass

**Author's Note:**

> None

**Title:** Ships that pass  
 **Username:** [](http://sheffield.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://sheffield.livejournal.com/)**sheffield**  
 **Length/size:** 1450 words  
 **Rating:** Gen  
 **Warnings, kinks & contents: ** None  
 **Author's/artist's notes:** None

 **Summary/description:** It's dangerous to attract the attention of a fledgling crimelord

 

 

Ships that pass...

1.

"Richard Brook - hello?"  
"Who, darling?"  
"I'm Richard Brook? Playing Puck? Um... Philip sent me?"  
"Oh. Oh, right. Well, put your stuff over there, grab a coffee and come on in and sit down. Eileen will be here in a few moments and she'll want to start straight away."

Another newbie, Shelagh thought irritably. Eileen might be a brilliant director with two awards under her belt from just one season, but she was also the most irritating person Shelagh had ever worked with. For. Because when you worked on the same production as Eileen, you didn't work WITH her but most definitely FOR her. Genius must be served, dear - she hadn't actually ever said it to Shelagh's face, but it was well known that it was her motto. Particularly if you were pretty.

Although this one... might do quite well, actually. Eileen was notoriously ... helpful, around her boys. The young men of the cast. Particularly the pretty ones. Not that she ever allowed anyone to be cast who wasn't good looking, of course. Genius must be served, dear, and what their genius liked to be served with was a stream of good looking young actors, eager to please.

Shelagh watched carefully. Eileen - of course - made a beeline for the seat next to the newbie, what was his name? Brook, that's right. Brook laughed at her joke, fetched her a bottle of water, managed to make Eileen laugh in turn, and then bent his head to murmur something in the director's ear. Oh, this one would go far.

Euston Station, with my boot print on his behind, if I had my way, she thought bitterly. But that wasn't how it would go, of course. Brook would be a sensation, and Eileen would give interviews about her brilliance in nurturing a meteoric new talent. Provided Brook became sufficiently besotted, he might even last into a second production. Careers had been built on less, after all.

Only, somehow... that wasn't quite what happened. Oh, they left together that first night, and they arrived together the next morning. But after three days Eileen showed up alone. And then Brook showed up with a bruise on his pretty cheek and he and Eileen had a long, low-voiced conversation where Eileen looked to be on the point of tears.

And then...

Brook was gone, and Eileen was devastated. And the police were sniffing around the dressing rooms and asking questions about just where, madam, Mr Brook had last been seen in public?

Shelagh, amongst other things, kept the books. So she noticed - how could she not - the drain on the company funds. Because, dear, they were pretty much playing to full houses and paying mostly Equity minimum, so how could they not be making a profit?

Because Eileen was cashing a big fat cheque for between £500 and £750 every other day and putting it down as "petty cash", that's why.

Shelagh thought about it for a few days, and then made a few discreet phone calls. Because, after all, dear, there's more than one theatre company you know? Best not to get involved in anything too... well, in anything, in fact.

2.

Accountancy, it wasn't. Bookkeeping, yes - going in to people's little businesses and making sense of the amounts they spent and brought in every week, so that at the end of the year they could go to their accountant with some actual books rather than just a carrier bag of receipts.

She had a nice little operation now; twenty seven different people, housewives mostly, who worked for her and went in to little local businesses. She was careful not to send them in to the same place more than twice a year, because otherwise they and the business would get cosy with each other and they wouldn't need *her* and her agency, now would they, dear? But on the whole it worked out well - the people who were regular enough to do their books every week on the whole found someone - the same person - to come in every week, developed a relationship with them. It was the chaotic ones, the ones who didn't think about keeping the books till the carrier bag of receipts overflowed, or till they went to the bank and there was no money there, or till one of their suppliers stopped supplying them - they were the ones who brought her and her team in. Firefighters, in a way.

And she still did the books for half a dozen theatre companies, just to keep her hand in, dear.

It was in the nature of the business, though, that sometimes someone would let you down. One person's kid would get chicken pox and then someone else's mum needed a lift to a hospital appointment, and then you reshuffled and reorganised and someone else said they couldn't get to Catford by 11 and still get back to pick up the kids and, well, in the end there were some jobs you went and did yourself, just to keep all the plates spinning.

Boring. Adding up and ticking, dear, that's all it amounted to really. Anyone could have done it, but it was something that came easy to some people and was like walking on broken glass to others.

This one was a little cafe. Walking a fine line between making a profit - owner made excellent home-made cakes, and more to the point understood a profit and loss account too and could make them for a price people would actually pay - and going down the tubes like a million other redundancy-money businesses.

She sorted the receipts, read the takings history off the tills, filled in the account books and made sure the quarter's VAT returns and PAYE were ready to go.

Hmmm. Funny that. There was something off about the cash account. There ought to have been more cash going into the bank than that. Oh well, lots of these little businesses had owners who couldn't distinguish between MY money and the BUSINESS' money, and took the profits home with them in their back pockets. The taxman would find it, she knew, but it was hardly her place to give cash flow tuition...

She looked up as the door opened and saw the man come in. For a second she thought he was someone famous, off the telly, and then as if she'd seen his casting card in Spotlight she remembered. Brook. Richard Brook. Last seen mysteriously disappearing from that poor little company in Hammersmith that had looked like it was going to blossom and then had quietly folded up like so many others.

Well well well, dear. Where had HE come from, she wondered.

She kept her eyes down on the books that were spread out on one of the customer tables in the cafe, and worked quietly. There were only two actual customers in the cafe anyway; it was that dull period just before ten where the brisk little breakfast trade had gone but still a few minutes before the morning coffee crowd started to arrive.

Brook went up to the counter and smiled at Penny, the owner. "You're late, Ms P," he said pleasantly.  
Penny glanced over at Shelagh and then said quietly, "I'm sorry, I had a bad week. I don't suppose...?"  
Brook smiled.  
"Oh Penny, Penny - you don't mind if I call you Penny, do you? I'll have a gingerbread latte and a piece of lemon drizzle. And I don't need to explain to you that it's a really, really bad idea to economise on your insurance, do I?"  
"Well, no, but-"  
"Gingerbread latte?"  
Penny looked flustered but she still tapped out the grounds and put the next shot of expresso on automatically, checking the temperature on the jug and running some more steam through the milk, measuring out the gingerbread syrup. It was as if her hands moved on their own, dear, honestly. Her eyes filled up with tears and she dropped her voice but Shelagh still heard some of the words. "Please" and "begging" and "don't", for example.

Shelagh thought about it for, oh, a couple of seconds. And then packed up her things, put the business records into a cardboard folder, and slid it onto the counter in front of Penny.

"There you are, dear, all done till next time. I'll email you the invoice as usual. Toodles!"

And she was gone before Penny could say a word, or, more to the point, before Brook turned around.

But it was probably nothing, after all, dear, and if you've seen one little redundancy-money cafe go bust you've seen a dozen. So what does it matter how? Bad bookkeeping, spending the profits, or Act of God. That's what the insurance companies called it when premises suddenly fell down for no reason, right?

Only that funny discrepancy in the cash account seemed to turn up in an awful lot of those little businesses when you knew what you were looking for, dear.

3.

"People like you don't do drugs," he said.

"That's right, dear," she said, giggling a little. Because people LIKE her didn't do drugs, right enough. She did, though. All the bleeding time now. People like her drank gin till their faces were purple, but honestly dear people like her also tuned in turned on and dropped out back in the sixties and she still knew people who knew people who...

What?

Oh. Right. Skinny kid. Stoned out of his gourd, of course.

"I am the walrus," she confided, giggling.  
"Koo-Koo ca chew" he agreed solemnly, sliding gently sideways till his face was on her bosom. Which might have been quite nice, if he hadn't been drooling slightly.

Mo was a darling, Shelagh thought fuzzily. He'd sorted her out with some nice little fuzzy pills and she wasn't frightened of... anyone. Not anymore, dear.

She patted the skinny kid's head, vaguely. Mo had sorted him out, too. Eileen would have loved him, before Brook... The skinny kid, not Mo, of course. Mo was ... Was a dear, in his way, only being around junkies all the time he did, well, smell a bit, to be honest.

She wouldn't have needed Mo if she hadn't been so scared all the damned time. But the pills had sorted - what?

She threw up, all over the skinny kid's back, which was a shame, because he was sooooooo pretty...

Eileen had liked them pretty, too, but she...

"Mo. Where... Fingernails chewed... Supplier... Bad"  
Skinny kid was rambling. He looked bad. Bad trip, dear, she thought vaguely. Only she was going to be sick again and she couldn't breathe and...

Skinny kid had a phone and was singing into it. "Yellow matter custard..." but Shelagh wasn't hearing any more.

Epilogue

"Don't be absurd, Sherlock. You'll stay in a locked ward till you're clean and we'll hear no more about it. You were incoherent and on the point of asphyxia, with a dead, drug-addicted, middle-aged woman on your lap and with a dead drug dealer in the next room. If you hadn't been all but dead yourself you'd even now be under suspicion for the decidedly non-natural causes that killed the drug dealer, by the way. Enough. That part of your life is over. I don't care what you do next, but choose something else."  
"Piss off, Mycroft."  
"Charming as ever."

The beginning...


End file.
